What Is It About Guns That Turns Some People’s Brains To Mush?

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and anti-gun activists’ rush to force through draconian gun restrictions while the nation is ripe for manipulation, liberals have been whipping out all sorts of analogies to persuade people of their stance:

“If the logic is, it’s useless to regulate guns because criminals will still break the law, then why have traffic laws?”

This was a post from a Facebook friend of mine- reposted from the Being Liberal fan page-to which I replied, “I didn’t realize cars were used for self-defense, or that traffic laws prohibit people from owning cars.”

A liberal friend stepped in: “Yeah, well people also don’t drive cars into classrooms and theaters to kill people intentionally,” to which I replied, “I didn’t realize by ‘why have traffic laws’ the poster meant ‘why have laws against driving cars into classrooms and theaters to kill people intentionally.’ I believe we already have more general laws against that.”

Another Facebook meme declares, “If a preschool child hits another child with a rock, the solution is not for every child to have a rock.” Is that so. I didn’t know the Newtown shooting had been carried out by a child, or that anyone was advocating arming children with guns as a way of preventing schoolhouse murders. What does schoolyard sparring have to do with mass shootings?

A third post asks, “So you want to talk about the effects of mental illness associated with gun crime? Let’s start with the paranoid delusion that your handgun is going to help you rise up against a tyrannical government,” to which I would query, “Ever hear of the American Revolution?”

Keep ’em coming, libs. We have all day.

Flawed as these analogies are, at least the posters are trying to make actual arguments. Most mainstream news analysts have been using the less subtle tactic of cutting off gun control opponents before they can make points.

Last week CNN’s Soledad O’Brien interviewed John Lott for the purpose of trying to understand his work researching and debunking gun use myths. Lott has talked to dozens of unarmed gun crime victims who regret that they weren’t able to arm themselves. He made the devastating point that virtually all public shootings have occurred in places where guns are banned; for example: (1) James Holmes shot up the one movie theater in Aurora, Colorado out of seven that banned guns, and (2) Dylan Klebold of Columbine infamy had been lobbying a state legislator to ban concealed handguns.

O’Brien interrupted Lott to offer the complete non sequitur that all public shootings involve people with guns.

O’Brien then made the specious but slightly more relevant point that we can’t know for a fact whether almost all mass shootings occurring in gun-free zones is just a coincidence. She concluded by shutting Lott down and gasping, “Your position completely boggles me, honestly. I just do not understand it.” Maybe if O’Brien let Lott talk instead of repeatedly interrupting him to tell him that all gun crimes involve guns, she would get a better sense of where he’s coming from.

Piers Morgan was less subdued than O’Brien when he interviewed Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt, who graciously refrained from insulting Morgan after the latter called him “an unbelievably stupid man.”

After Pratt made the absolutely true points that gun rights allow people to protect themselves, police often don’t show up in time to save endangered victims, and gun control laws have never worked anyplace they’ve been tried, Morgan responded with the following taunts: “You’re talking complete and utter nonsense,” “What you just said was an absolute lie,” and “You don’t give a damn about the gun murder rate.”